Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Open Source Ecology - The Global Village Construction Set

I stumbled upon this on good old TED.com. It is a network of farmers, engineers, designers and builders developing, as founder Marcin Jakubowski calls it, a 'Civilization Starter Kit'.
The project is called 'OPEN SOURCE ECOLOGY' and they are harnessing the power of 'open source' collaboration to endow the modern man/woman with the skills to be self-sufficient.

Marcin Jakubowski

In his speech at TED in April last year, Marcin mentioned he left his twenties highly qualified but barely useful.

“I finished my 20s with a PhD in fusion energy, and I discovered I was useless.” - Marcin Jakubowski

In an urge to strip back to the roots of living he bought a some land and became a farmer. However, his lack of practical know-how become evident again when his old tractor kept breaking down. The lack of reliability in his farm equipment coupled with his lack of mechanical expertise proved to be draining, mentally and financially.
In push to promote be more self-sufficient and make have machinery he himself built and could maintain, Marcin founded Open Source Ecology.

'The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.'

Using the collective skills and knowledge of many to provide free knowledge to all is a noble endeavor. I like how more and more people are exploiting the potential of open source platforms. I will be following their progress closely.....